progesterone
 

I'm just doing a follow-up report on my experience with progesterone, which I was using in the hopes of avoiding the myasthenia crash I seem to get at the very end of my cycle. I only tried it for five days and gave up. It wasn't helping my symptoms, but it was making me sick--nauseous and groggy, and continual migraines. So, scratch that. Back to my usual non-nauseous reasonably alert painfree myasthenic self.

Abby

Not that you want to revist all that but were you just on the wrong form for you? Making these kind of drugs must be a very fragil process. I used to use Progest over the counter cream and liked it especially the calming and sleep help.

I read your first posting on this and I sure agree with hormones being a big murly area. I am glad to see many of you get that. I havent gotten much support around the changes in my body since the vitamin D hormone has been a consistant problem that also has affected my parathyroid acting normally. I am very different when the vit D is up in the 50s. There is a miriad of symptoms including how differently my body responds to mestinon.

Annie59

Yeah, I've heard such good things about progesterone supplementation for the second half of the cycle. Evidently many women are a bit deficient, especially at my age (44), maybe because of chemicals in the environment that act as estrogen. I don't know. I do know that the progesterone drop at the end of my cycle wreaks havoc on me in general. Even before I got MG, it used to give me terrible migraines (cured, strangely enough, by diuretics). So I thought supplementing might be a good idea. It was worth a try.

I was using Prochieve, which is real progesterone (not progestin). It's usually prescribed to women to help them conceive, or to help them maintain an early pregnancy. It was my idea, by my ob/gyn thought it was sensible. She told me I was the day's most interesting patient.

I have a relatively mild case of MG. It stops me from doing things, but it doesn't make me groggy or nauseous, and it doesn't cause me pain. My recent experience with the progesterone is yet another reminder to me how much worse off I could be...I wonder how many reminders of that I'm going to need before it sinks in! This learning to be human thing is really tricky...

Abby

Thanks for sharing your results with progesterone.

I wanted to cautiously suggest magnesium supplements, or eating foods high in magnesium. It is known to help headaches from what I have read and I have found that magnesium has a definite help on my MG, in fact my MG is much more mild since I started taking magnesium supplements and have since switched to a diet high in magnesium. I recommend looking into this vitamin. Since I started taking magnesium (or eating magnesium high foods) I have had no pain or discomfort associated with my monthly period. I have no doubt this is due to the magnesium.

Magnesium is a vitamin that one must be cautious taking with MG, so do some reading and talk to your doctor first.

If you do decide to take supplements, be sure to get the correct form of magnesium, the magnesium oxide form found in most vitamins is pretty much useless.

Here is a great thread on this forum to learn about magnesium.

http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/showthread.php?t=1138